


Get You

by liadan14



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Dating, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining, Secret Relationship, emotionally constipated idiots, more like secret courtship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 12:02:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19767802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: It's not like the scales have suddenly fallen from Jim's eyes when Sulu points out that no self-respecting Captain should let anyone talk to them the way Bones talks to him. It's more that he's kind of always known how he feels about Bones, but now that he has to think about it, he accidentally panics himself into a job application.





	1. Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is tagged as AOS and TOS because I'm shamelessly stealing some character elements from TOS (like Jim's dating behavior, mostly) and also things like the emergency of the week being basically a Windows '98 screensaver.
> 
> The chapter titles are the 80's cheesefest songs I was thinking about when I wrote this. They both involve "Get You". Thus the fic title. No apologies.

The thing is, before Jim met Bones, he was fine. He didn’t have a best friend who lived in his dorm room, who shared meals with him, who brought him coffee when it turned out studying four years of material in three years’ time was an all-night sort of job, and that was fine. Jim was used to being responsible for himself.

It’s just that, with Bones there, he doesn’t really have to be.

Bones has this innate tendency to mother-goat, which is basically the same as a tendency to mother-hen except in grumpy. So he lives in Jim’s dorm room even after they could both be living in singles (“Who knows what damn fool things you’ll get up to if I’m not around to make sure you don’t?”), he eats meals with Jim whenever they can both get their schedules to cooperate (“Someone needs to make sure you eat something green.”) and he keeps supplying Jim with coffee and keeping him away from energy boosters (“If you’re gonna break your body, you’re gonna do it the old-fashioned way.”).

Jim doesn’t even think of complaining about it.

In fact, it doesn’t even strike him as strange, until about three years into the Enterprise’s five-year-tour, Sulu gets this weird expression on his face after Bones leaves the alpha shift’s lunch table to go “perform surgery on an idiot who couldn’t graduate kindergarten”. 

(It’s Philips, an engineer who got his leg twisted in a Jeffries tube in an admittedly avoidable incident, but tell Bones that.)

“What?” Jim asks Sulu. “I got something on my face?”

“No,” Sulu says. “It’s just…like, should he talk to you like that? You’re the captain.”

Jim blinks.

He swallows. 

“The way Bones talks to me is just fine,” he says. 

He spends the rest of his shift and half of the next one quietly panicking about whether Bones is being insubordinate and about how awful it would be if he weren’t.

Around the start of gamma shift, he manages to reason out that Spock is the most insubordinate asshat on the damn ship, and Sulu is just inches behind him, and Bones really doesn’t call his command into question anywhere as often as those two jerks. Which begs the question of what exactly the issue is with how Bones talks to him.

He keeps careful tabs the next two days. 

They eat three out of five meals together (dinner on the second day being nonexistent due to emergency). Bones spends a roughly guesstimated thirty percent of the time they’re in the mess together:  
a) Berating Jim’s food choices.  
b) Complaining about the crew having the temerity to get sick or injured.  
c) Making sure Jim is getting enough sleep.

Another thirty percent of his time is spent listening to Jim talk about his day. 

Well, okay, talk about his day and also poke fun at Bones’ deep and abiding unwillingness to actually treat sick people when he thinks it’s their own fault for being sick.

The final third, he eats.

Jim fails to see the problem in this, honestly.

He thinks about it for another week, just to be sure. Then he calls Sulu into the ready room.

Sulu enters with a face that may as well be screaming _what did I do now?_

“Have a seat,” Jim says, “and tell me how Bones should be talking to me.”

Sulu’s shoulders instantly relax, and he sprawls out across from Jim. “I mean, if it doesn’t bother you, it’s fine, and it doesn’t seem like anyone really cares. He just sometimes seems like he’s your keeper, y’know?”

Jim looks at Sulu blankly.

“Like he doesn’t trust you to take care of yourself.”

Jim laughs. “Well, he doesn’t.”

Sulu stares at him. “Okay,” he says. “So you don’t care. Fine. No problem.”

“What would be the problem?”

“It would really piss me off,” Sulu shrugs. “Seems…I dunno, condescending. Like he’s babying you.”

Jim hasn’t finished figuring out how he feels about that when they’re both called out to the bridge to deal with a weird spinny multicolored blob blocking their path to the gamma quadrant.

-

Jim didn’t always have a Bones. He used to live in Iowa, and get himself in trouble all the damn time, and have no one. It was fine. He was fine. No one babied him, no one treated him like he was less than, except his stepfather and the police. 

Then again, Jim doesn’t exactly feel babied now. 

He spent his time at Starfleet Academy getting himself into trouble almost as often, come to think of it, and having a Bones-shaped grumbling goat of a best friend did not stop him even a little bit. Bones actually helped, mostly. Also, it’s not like Jim was dying of scurvy before he met Bones or anything. He just doesn’t share the man’s ridiculous penchant for limp, stewed, slimy greens.

Come to think of it, he asks about how much sleep Bones is getting almost as often as Bones asks him. And he likes to sneak cookies onto Bones’ plate sometimes when he’s extra grumbly, because Bones is secretly terrified of going soft and middle-aged and sticks to his work-out regimen with a doggedness Jim can only envy, but he still deserves cookies sometimes.

He tries to think of a casual way to work this whole issue into conversation with Bones, but he realizes that he doesn’t really know what he wants to say about it, so he gives up.

Time marches on, and Jim chews and chews on his friendship with Bones in his head until he has trouble looking Bones in the eye sometimes. He thinks back on his life, pre- and post-Bones, and comes to understand that he has let himself become entirely dependent on Bones and his constant nagging.

He stares at Bones when he can get away with it – gym dates during gamma shift, watching Bones sweat like a pig and his face turn bright red as he lifts weights – and he catches himself thinking, _I want to lick him._

It’s not like the scales have suddenly fallen from his eyes. It’s not like this is a new thing. He’s been aware, in an abstract way, how pretty Bones is. He’s even told Bones, multiple times, how desirable he is, mostly in attempts to get Bones laid. Looking back, that’s probably pretty weird, but it’s just a statement of fact. Bones works out. He has great arms, and great shoulders, and pretty stunning calves too. Honestly, sometimes Jim thinks about what it would be like if Bones’ fears did come true and he did go a little middle-aged, maybe get a little belly, and honestly, in Jim’s head it would make him unreasonably attractive. Mostly, he has really good eyes. Expressive eyes. 

So, these are all thoughts Jim is aware of having. What is kind of new to him is the sudden awareness that finding Bones attractive is a lot like being attracted to him. What is new is his added knowledge of how soul-suckingly emotionally dependent he is on Bones.

Jim does the only mature, reasonable thing, and applies for a job on Yorktown.

Even as he does it, he’s aware it’s a bad idea. He’s overwhelmed by his job, his responsibilities (he’s not even thirty fucking years old, it’s all too much to rest on his shoulders), and he’s running scared from the one person who knows how to make him feel at home.

But Jim is nothing if not a perennial idiot.

It takes losing so many crew members on Altamid for Jim to wake the fuck up. It takes anxious hours spent not knowing where Bones is, whether he’s dying slowly and alone without Jim their to hold him, to save him, for Jim to grasp that he’s a dumbass, which is weird, because Bones has been telling him that all along.

Waiting through the aftermath of the Altamid clusterfuck is tortuous. There are approximately shit billion Starfleet officials who want to ask Jim intrusive questions, and there’s medical to get through, because god forbid Jim make it through a mission without someone trying to crack some vertebrae.

At least it’s not Bones doing the exam. 

The last few months, Jim has bent over backwards to avoid Bones in medical. This was mostly unnoticeable given that he’s always done his best to avoid medical, but he’s been very, very careful to only let Chapel and M’Benga treat him, to schedule his appointments on Bones’ off-shifts and to just Not Go There.

Because the one time Bones treated him for an allergic reaction in the last six months was downright torturous.

Jim is well aware that other doctors don’t treat their patients like this. Hell, he’s aware Bones doesn’t treat his other patients like this. But when it’s Jim on that exam table, or rather, Jim skirting around the vicinity of the exam table trying to avoid it, Bones has a way of grabbing him firmly and gently and putting him where he wants Jim to be, of a slightly rough hand with the hypospray and a gentle, firm pressure on Jim’s thigh with his other hand, and knowing what he knows now, Jim had whimpered.

Bones had run an extra battalion of tests on him, muttering about his elevated heart rate and whether his damnfool immune system was having a reaction to the antihistamine.

Jim had thought very, very hard about writing reports and the time he got food poisoning before an important meeting with Starfleet command, and very much not about how badly he wanted Bones’ hands all over him. It had still been a close thing between the heat from Bones’ hand on his thigh and the way Bones growled in his ear about taking better care of himself.

It definitely makes him feel like an asshole, though, when he ducks out on Bones after it’s all said and done and then Bones goes and surprises him with a birthday party.

It also definitely makes him feel other things to look at Bones, three hours in, with his leather jacket resting over a bar stool, his bare arms crossed over his chest as he pontificates about something to Spock. 

Christ.

Jim really needs to do something about this.

Only, it’s like he’s missed his chance. All of a sudden, Bones is always flanked by Spock, by Uhura, by Chekov, by fucking Sulu and Demora and Ben, and Jim can’t seem to catch him alone for a minute to tell him, “hey, I’m embarrassingly in love with you, please let me lick your forearms.”

He waits all of three days before he decides he’s been pathetic enough about this and he breaks into Bones’ temporary living quarters and just camps out there until the man himself shows up.

“You could have called,” Bones says, letting himself in to find Jim playing solitaire on his padd.

“This was easier,” Jim says. “Besides, you’re always busy.”

“I thought I might need some new friends, y’know, when you become Vice-Admiral.”

Jim inspects a fingernail, uncomfortable heat blooming on the back of his neck. “I turned that job down.”

“Okay then.”

“Look, I.” Jim gets up, walks over to Bones. “I got a little psyched out. I panicked.”

“You panicked your way into a job application,” Bones says slowly.

“Um,” Jim says. Now he’s standing he doesn’t really know what to do with his hands anymore. “Yeah.”

“And what does this have to do with you breaking into my quarters?”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

Bones stares at him for an agonizingly long period of time, then says, “Nope, sorry, still not seeing the connection here.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Jim says. “I’m sorry I applied to the stupid job, I was scared and overwhelmed and I didn’t know I was in love with you for a really long time and then I didn’t know what to do about it.”

“So you’re saying,” Bones says slowly, “the thought of being in love with me was so terrible you wanted to put a galaxy between us.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” Jim says. “You’re just willfully misinterpreting me now.”

“Well, you’re not exactly giving me a lot to work with here.”

“I realized I was in love with you,” Jim says, slowly, like he’s talking to a four-year-old, “and I realized I probably have been for like at least four years, and it freaked me out pretty badly because I got scared I couldn’t handle just being friends anymore, and I couldn’t stand being on the Enterprise with you and not being friends. So I applied to the job. And then I realized that it’s a lot more important to me to have you in my life at all. So I turned down the job.”

Bones stares at him.

“You gonna say anything?”

“Jesus H. Christ, Jim, what kind of twisted crazy moon logic is that?”

“I take it back, I’m gonna stay here and find a new best friend.”

Bones is still staring at him, but his eyes are doing that crinkly thing that means he’s about three seconds from laughing his ass off at Jim. “Jim,” he says. “Darlin’. _Only you_ would come up with something that bizarre to avoid talking about your feelings.”

“Hey,” Jim says, “I’m here. I’m talking. The feelings. I have them.”

“Uh-huh,” Bones says. “Prove it.”

It’s like the space station skids to a halt. 

“Wait, what?”

“You heard me,” Bones says. “So you say you’re in love with me.” He’s walking towards Jim, except he’s not so much walking as he is slinking, and who knew Bones could slink. “Prove it,” he repeats, just a hair’s breadth from Jim’s mouth, and Jim may be an idiot, but even he can interpret that.

He kisses Bones.

It’s not his best work, to be fair. He’s pretty sure the last time his heart was this far in his throat when he kissed someone, he was all of fifteen and she was half a head taller than him. There’s blood rushing in his ears, and of all the ways he saw this going, this was on the lower end of the probability schematics.

But Bones is there, and Bones has always been shockingly good at managing Jim’s shoddy impulse control, so he rests one of his hands at the back of Jim’s neck, tilting his head a bit, and the other at Jim’s waist. He arranges Jim just how he wants him, slides his tongue along the seam of Jim’s lips, and kisses him till Jim’s knees feel like plomeek soup.

Jim is pretty sure he looks like the human disaster he feels like when Bones pulls away, but Bones just gives him this absolutely filthy little smile and says, “That’s a nice start, darlin’.”

“Start?” Jim says.

“Look,” Bones says, “this is all pretty sudden and pretty new, and I’m gonna need a little more than a really stupid job application and a kiss to convince me you’re serious about this. You know I’m damaged goods.”

It is at this point that Jim realizes that Bones intends to _punish him_ for the Vice Admiral application by making him wait for sex.


	2. One Way or Another

Leonard is, unlike some people, not entirely divorced from his emotions. Some half-Vulcans have even intimated he might have too close a relationship with them. He has been clearly and painfully aware that he is in love with Jim Kirk for, oh, going on five years now. He’s always said if you’re going to risk your career and break the laws of nature for a man, you should know how you feel about him.

All this to say, he’s had a lot of time to get used to being in love with Jim. A lot of time to think on what he’d like to do with Jim. To Jim. Not just in bed, although there, too, but in general.

Jim is a hot mess. Everyone knows this. As such, Leonard is not exactly shocked it’s taken him this long to realize there may be more going on than friendship, nor is he shocked that Jim processed it so badly. One of the things he wants, more than anything, is to help Jim understand that his feelings aren’t the enemy. To help Jim feel like he’s worth something. That’s what the damn birthday party was all about.

Hell, he was even prepared to support Jim becoming Vice-Admiral.

Five years is a long time to wait for someone, and Leonard had always been aware that Jim may never return his feelings. He was comfortable in their situation as it was, he would have liked more but being the closest person to Jim was better than nothing and he wasn’t prepared to risk that. Sure, it stung that Jim didn’t tell him about the application and he had to find out from Nyota, but he was prepared to be supportive and understanding. He had even thought it might be time for him to move on from his ill-fated one-sided attraction.

Then Jim had gone and sprung a whole load of crazy on Leonard, and to be honest, Leonard was having a hard time believing it. The last thing he wanted was to become one of the many people Jim slept with and then avoided for fear of discussing feelings. And it didn’t really seem like Jim to go all out with a love confession.

So, he asks for more.

And Jim delivers.

Leonard has always known in an abstract way that Jim wines and dines his prospective partners pretty extensively. He’s even been around to watch Jim memorize some choice lines of Shakespeare to whisper in a date’s ear, and if Jim ever tries that with him, someone is getting punched.

It’s different to be on the receiving end.

Jim picks him up for their first date on a Tuesday afternoon. He’s combed his hair properly, he’s wearing a button-up shirt and slacks, he smells subtly of cologne, and Leonard’s seen him like this before but it gets him going just a little to know that Jim put in the effort for _him_. 

When he opens the door, Jim takes him by the hand and kisses his knuckles. His eyes are sparkling and he leads Leonard across half the damn Starbase until they reach his destination. It’s an exhibition on historical medical technology across the local quadrant, and Leonard’s not gonna lie, he melts a little.

They make it through the first room on stilted, first-date nerves, and then Jim tells him to stop fronting and give him the full lecture on how disgusting and dangerous space travel is. He even asks questions.

After an early dinner in the museum café, they walk back towards the living quarters through Yorktown’s garden district. Leonard is willing to admit it’s very romantic. Jim must’ve scouted the area first, too, because he even knows where the peach trees are, and he plucks them one for dessert.

“Alright,” Leonard says, reluctantly impressed as they sit on a bench sharing their spoils. “Solid showing for a first date.”

“Solid!” Jim gasps. “I’m wounded.”

Leonard kisses him goodnight at the door, but he doesn’t invite Jim in.

He’s expecting Jim to get impatient, three or four weeks in, but Jim doesn’t. It’s not like Jim is doing all the work here, Leonard’s invited him out for laser tag, for the movies, even for a home-cooked dinner, and Jim isn’t pushing. In fact, he’s being the perfect gentleman. It’s strange.

Leonard has seen how Jim does this, plenty of times. He’s seen him do the romantic bits, till he has whoever it is is basically putty in his arms, and he’s seen Jim wave goodbye at the door the next morning and never see them again. Heck, Jim has seen him do the same. 

And it’s not like Leonard isn’t turning to putty, just a little. Their good-night exchanges have gone from a single kiss to embarrassingly long make-out sessions just out of sight of the security cameras. The problem has never been that he doesn’t want Jim.

He finally asks, when he can barely take it himself anymore, riled up and gasping with Jim’s lips trailing down his neck.

“I’m waiting for you to trust me,” Jim says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You don’t.”

“Jim, I put my life in your hands on a weekly basis,” Leonard argues.

Jim presses a soft, slow kiss to his lips. “You told me you were damaged goods,” he says.

Leonard wants to protest, because that was a pretty blatant line (heck, he’s used it to get laid before), but Jim kisses him silent all over again.

“I think that’s maybe more true than you want to admit,” Jim says. “Besides, I like dating you. It’s nice.”

Leonard huffs. “So what, you just decide you’re in love with me and it’s totally fine and you’re just gonna wait around until I’m ready?”

“Got a problem with that?” Jim asks.

Leonard is nearly certain he does, but he can’t think of it.

-

Dating is hard with the Enterprise up and running again, but Jim is nothing if not tenacious. After all, there are gardens on the Enterprise, too, and concerts given by well-meaning if not terribly talented crewmembers. It’s actually not that different, given they used to go to these things too. What’s different is that Jim picks him up at his door and walks him back, after. Leonard draws the line at watching any plays, too scared that Jim will see this as a blanket opportunity to quote _Romeo and Juliet_ at him. Too scared he’ll actually fall for it.

He has to ask Jim in on the ship to say goodnight, for one because it’d seem mighty weird to the rest of the crew if they were loitering around the hallways, and for another because it would seem a lot weirder if the crew were to spot the Captain and the CMO making out like teenagers. Jim still does not press his advantage and it just about drives Leonard up the wall.

It takes Jim actually calling a halt for him to realize how much.

He’s got Jim on his couch, pressed up against the back cushion, his knees on either side of Jim’s legs, his hands tangled in Jim’s hair, and Jim wrenches his mouth away from Leonard’s. 

“Bones,” he gasps. “Bones, I’m gonna need.” He draws in a deep breath.

“What do you need?” Leonard asks, and he can actually feel Jim shudder underneath him.

“I’m gonna need you to go a little easier on me here,” Jim says. “I’m waiting. I can do the waiting. No question. But, uh. Look, this is not a pun, but you’re making it really hard.”

Leonard grins, drops his hips just a fraction to grind against Jim’s, slow and dirty.

Jim moans.

Jim moans, then sets his hands very firmly on Leonard’s hips and moves him aside so Jim can clamber out from under him. 

“That’s just mean,” he says, and Leonard would feel bad if Jim's eyes weren’t totally blown out and his hair weren’t so mussed. “Look, I’ve laid all my cards on the table here, and I want nothing more than to just go right back to this, but if you’re not ready, please don’t tease me.”

“What if I am ready?” Leonard asks.

“Are you?”

“I.” Leonard stops. “I want to be.”

Jim shakes his head. “I need more than that. I need us to be real, Bones. I love you.”

“I…” Leonard start, and then stops. “You’re right, I’m not being fair.”

Jim smiles at him, gives him another kiss and says, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” as he heads for the door.

-

He tries it out over dinner in the mess, casually, as Jim is eating his mandated side of beet salad with his pastrami sandwich. “I love you,” he says. The ambient noise is loud enough around them that he’s sure no one heard him.

Jim looks up at him, shocked, beet juice dribbling from his spoon onto his uniform shirt. “You too,” he says. 

He tries it again as a good night.

Nothing bad happens. The enterprise doesn’t explode. Jim doesn’t instantly lose interest and start banging Janice Rand (not that she would let him).

Jim lasts a whole week before asking what brought about this change.

“It’s not like it’s new,” Bones says. “I, unlike you, have known I feel this way for a while.”

Jim shows uncharacteristic maturity in not asking how long.

“I’m glad you told me,” Jim says.

Two days later Jim breaks down, because he’s really not that mature. He comes barging into Leonard’s quarters with no announcement, flops down on the couch, and says, “So, I thought I could be patient but I can’t. I’m going to need to know all about how long you’ve been in love with me and didn’t tell me.”

Leonard jots a shoddy signature at the end of his paperwork and throws the padd at Jim, who catches it, fumbles it, then catches it properly. “Present for you,” he says.

Jim checks the contents, nods.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, save Jim’s fidgeting.

“It’s not like I wrote it down in my calendar,” Leonard says. 

“Ballpark figure?”

“Well, I definitely loved you when you died,” Leonard says, and he doesn’t mean to sound hoarse or miserable, but he does.

Jim rakes a hand through his hair. “Oh.” 

Leonard nods.

“I’m so sorry,” Jim says.

“It’s been a while since then.”

“Bones.”

Leonard meets his eyes. 

“I’m sorry I put you through that. I know I can’t promise it will never happen again. But I’m sorry.”

Leonard nods slowly. “I never blamed you,” he says. “It’s the life you chose. It’s the life we chose.”

“You didn’t choose this just for me, did you?”

Leonard sighs, moves over to the couch to sit with Jim, to hold Jim’s hands in his own. “Yes and no,” he says. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Jim. After Jocelyn, after my father, after everything, I thought that was it. I’d fucked up my job, my marriage, my family and there was nothing ahead of me. So I joined Starfleet, figured I’d get as far away as possible, and there you were.”

Jim knows all this already, but he’s still listening like it isn’t old news that Leonard’s a sad sack who fucked up his life. 

“I thought you’d get sick of me after a week, y’know. You’re so much younger.”

Jim snorts.

“You have so many people lining up to spend time with you. You’re gorgeous, and smart, and you have great ideas. I thought I couldn’t compete and you’d give up eventually when you figured out I was just a miserable old hick.”

“ _Bones_.”

“But you didn’t,” Leonard continues doggedly, “and eventually I figured out that Starfleet wasn’t just a last resort and that the things I could do here are far beyond what I ever thought of in Georgia. And I have you to thank for that.”

“So…you’re grateful?” Jim asks skeptically.

“No, you dumb shit,” Leonard says. “If I’d stayed earthside I wouldn’t nearly get blown up every other week. I’m not gonna pretend I get nothing out of being here on this dumb-ass ship but your company; there’s a lot out here I never dreamed of. I guess I just always thought you’d end up living to fast and too much for me.”

“You think I’m gonna get bored and cheat on you,” Jim says.

“No, I do not,” Leonard says, insulted. “You’re not actually a cheater, Jim, that’s bullshit. I thought I’d drive you away eventually.”

“I’m not Jocelyn,” Jim says.

“I’m aware.”

“You’re not gonna drive me away,” Jim says. “I’m stubborn as fuck. And you’ve already thrown up on me.”

Against his better judgment, Leonard laughs. Jim takes advantage of it and drags him close for a kiss.

“I’m in love with you,” he says, low and close to Leonard’s mouth. “And I can’t promise you much, but I can promise you that we’ll always be friends and that I’ll be honest with you and I won’t write any stupid job applications without asking you first.”

“That sounds like a lot to me,” Leonard says. “I’m in love with you, too.”

Jim smiles at him like he invented the hyperdrive. When they kiss this time, it’s Leonard who changes the speed from slow and gentle. He drags Jim into his lap, gets his hands tucked tight under Jim’s uniform shirt, runs his fingers slow along Jim’s ribs. 

Jim drags his lips away from Leonard’s, gasping, “Tell me you’re sure.”

“If you ask me that one more time, I will change my mind,” Leonard threatens and drags Jim back in.

It’s not like he hasn’t noticed, over the course of the last three months of kissing Jim every chance he gets, that Jim goes limp and pliant whenever he takes charge a little. It’s not like he hasn’t spent a lot of personal time in the sonic shower thinking that little character trait over. So, it’s not exactly a premeditated move to stand up with Jim wrapped all around him, pressing his mouth all over Jim’s jawline, to push Jim up against the wall and press every inch of their bodies together. It’s not premeditated, but it’s definitely something he’s thought about.

Jim makes an honestly really gratifying noise.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he’s saying, “how are you this hot, fuck, please, Bones.”

And Leonard is really invested in giving him whatever he wants, but his hands are a little busy holding Jim up, and his mouth is a little busy with Jim’s earlobe. “What do you want,” he growls out against Jim’s skin.

“I want,” Jim gasps, “I want less clothes, fuck, I wanna see you.”

This seems like a really good idea to Leonard, good enough to let Jim down for long enough to pull off their uniform shirts, for Leonard to get his mouth on Jim’s ridiculously sensitive collarbone and for Jim to whine out senseless noises against him.

Jim seems to have had enough of this by the time his knees actually buckle, and he grips Leonard not particularly gently by the bicep and drags him over to the bed, pushing him down and dragging off his shoes before toeing off his own and settling on Bones’ lap again. He latches on to one of Leonard’s nipples, which makes Leonard hiss.

“Not that hard,” he groans, and Jim lessens the pressure, teasing with his tongue. 

Leonard retaliates, pinching one of Jim’s nipples between thumb and forefinger. He’s guessing Jim likes it a little rough there, and he’s not wrong, a shudder runs through Jim’s whole body and he grinds his hips down against Leonard’s thigh. 

“Fuck,” Jim says with feeling. “I knew you’d be good at this, but fuck, Bones, what are you doing to me.” 

“Well,” Leonard says, unaccountably smug, “I was kinda hopin’ I’d get you all riled up and then you’d fuck me.”

Jim kisses him like he’s desperate for it, surging up and holding Leonard’s skull in place. “Please,” he says. “Please, yes, that.”

They’ve only just got their pants unbuckled when the red alert starts blaring.

“Fuck shit cocksucking son of a fuck,” Jim grinds out, a little wild-eyed, his cock throbbing against Leonard’s.

Leonard closes his eyes, grits his teeth. “Hold your breath,” he says. “It’ll help.” 

“Yeah,” Jim says, pushing himself off of Leonard. That also helps, not being pressed up tight against Jim. 

By the time they’re in uniform and ready to go, no one could possibly tell they’d been about five seconds away from sex. Leonard really hopes he gets to punch someone or something.

The emergency takes twenty hours to resolve. There are only three sickbay patients as a result, but they’re being inhabited by alien microbiotic lifeforms, which is always a fun time and makes Leonard want to throw things. Thankfully, one of the side effects is a lot of slimy green goo running out the patients’ noses, which is an excellent killer for his sex drive.

By the time it’s over, he collapses into bed, angry, frustrated, relieved that at least Jim wasn’t on the planet and didn’t contract any bizarre illnesses this time, and tired beyond belief.

He sleeps for seven hours and wakes up to find Jim curled tight against him.

Leonard runs the possibilities through in his mind and decides that, no, it does not matter if they’re late to alpha shift. 

He ducks under the covers and is relieved to find Jim entirely naked. Back at the academy, as roommates, they’d slept in boxers out of respect for each other for the first year, but given the choice, they’d both rather sleep in the nude, and after that first year it had seemed silly to make a fuss about seeing each other naked given he was also Jim’s physician. It had also been weirdly appealing to see Jim naked as often as he liked, though really, that should have been a pretty good sign where things were headed.

All this to say, he has free access to suck Jim’s dick until he wakes up, which suits Leonard just fine. He’s not generally a big fan of giving head, his jaw gets sore and in his experience, most men aren’t very polite about it. But when he does feel like it, he really strongly enjoys how in control he feels.

Jim is the perfect person for that, it turns out, because he really, really enjoys Leonard being in charge. He wakes up slowly, in increments, and when he finally realizes what’s going on, his cock twitches between Leonard’s lips and he groans lasciviously.

“Good morning,” he rasps out, pulling the covers aside so he can see Leonard. Leonard pulls off for a moment to return the greeting, then gets back to work.

He’s not gonna do this much longer, he can already tell his jaw’s about to start complaining, but Jim is petting his hair and mumbling nice things, begging prettily for Leonard to keep going.

Leonard pulls off slowly, laving the head with his tongue a few last times. “No,” he says, “I don’t want you to finish like this.”

Jim grins down at him. “How do you want me?”

“Told ya,” Leonard says, grabbing the lube from his nightstand and slicking up his fingers. “I want you to fuck me.”

“Definitely not a hardship,” Jim says, watching with eyes wide as Leonard spreads himself open on his own fingers. “Y’know, I could help you with that.”

“Next time,” Leonard says. “I’m kinda in a hurry here.”

“Why?” Jim asks, folding his arms beneath his head (showing off, the asshole, he knows what he looks like when he does that). “We’ve got time.”

“Alpha shift’s about to start,” Leonard says. “And I haven’t come in three weeks, been waiting for this.”

Jim groans. “Fuck that’s hot.” He sits up, resettling Leonard a bit on his lap, so he can stroke sleep-warm hands down Leonard’s sides, grab at his cock, stroke him gently. Leonard sighs in appreciation, pulls his fingers out and, almost without warning, sinks down on Jim’s cock. 

“Fuck,” Jim grits out. “Warn a guy.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Leonard asks, meaning to sound light and airy, but landing more around strung out. Jim’s not exactly small, and he might not have come in a while, but he has been playing around with a few toys in the hopes he could get Jim in him. These are all things he’s not going to tell Jim just now, because Jim could do with a few surprises down the road.

“Let me,” Jim says, grasping at his hips, moving in aborted little thrusts.

“Let _me_ ,” Leonard says. He raises his hips slowly, then settles back down hard.

“’Kay,” Jim says, eyes wide. 

Leonard had been sure he would feel self-conscious. He knows what he likes in bed (to be fair, he likes being bossy outside of bed, too), but he’s had feelings for Jim for so long, and witnessed Jim’s affairs for so long he was sure he’d be overcome with doubts about his own attractiveness and abilities when it came right down to it. Turns out, he was wrong. Jim’s made him very sure, these last weeks, that Jim a) really likes him, and b) secretly enjoys being bossed around.

As is, this is just what he needs, Jim under him, smiling up loose and lazy, pupils blown out and mouth red and shiny, while Leonard grinds himself down on Jim just how he likes it, Jim’s cock hitting him just right where he needs it to be. He leans down to kiss Jim, losing the angle, but gaining Jim’s hands all over his back, gaining Jim’s hips moving in slow and steady counterpoint to his own, gaining Jim kissing him with morning breath and making little noises against his lips.

It takes Leonard a while to get really desperate, most times, and this is no different. He could ride Jim like this for a while yet, but he can tell that Jim is getting there, his muffled noises getting louder, his hands grabbing a little more firmly at Leonard. 

Jim, wily snake that he is, grabs for Leonard’s cock trapped between them and starts to stroke, and all of a sudden, Leonard’s body seems to remember that he almost got laid yesterday and then didn’t, and that he’s been forcing himself to wait for months, ridiculously, needlessly, and he groans out a wordless noise he didn’t expect.

“Yeah,” Jim says, “that’s it. C’mon, Bones, let me see you.”

Leonard rears up, really goes for it, grinds himself down on Jim like he means it, pushes himself forward into Jim’s hands. “Jim,” he says, breathlessly. “Jim, c’mon, faster.”

Jim grabs hold of his hips with his free hand, pushes himself up into Leonard faster, speeds up his fist on Leonard’s cock, lets him really go for it until Leonard is shaking apart on him, clenching down on him and spilling messily all over Jim’s fist and belly. The heavens don’t split open and the earth doesn’t shake to pieces under him, but Leonard is breathing hard and satisfied in a way he feels right down to the base of his spine.

“Bones,” Jim says, urgent. “Bones, can I, please.”

“Go for it,” Leonard says, fucked out and lazy, and raises his hips up again to drop down. Jim groans deep in his chest, wraps the hand covered in Leonard’s come around his other hip, plants his feet firmly on the mattress and thrusts up, hard and quick little jabs that send shocks of uncomfortable stimulation all through Leonard’s body. 

Jim’s glorious like this, unselfconscious and needy, chasing his own pleasure and finding it only minutes later, fucking himself deep and tight into Leonard and sobbing with it.

Leonard pulls off a second too soon, catching the last damp spray of Jim’s come against his lower back, but his thighs were starting to cramp. He collapses next to Jim, feeling lazy and pleased with himself.

Jim stretches with his whole body. “We should do that more often,” he says.

Leonard grins. “You know where I live.”

“Expect frequent visits.”

“Fine by me.”

They rest in silence for a few more slow, delightful minutes, before the computer announces the imminent shift change and they have to drag themselves under the sonic shower. It’s tempting to just stay there, to let Jim kiss him until they both forget about their other responsibilities, but that’s what shore leave is for.

-

Shore leave with Jim is better than Leonard thought it would be. Looking back, he’d always spent shore leave with Jim, camping and hiking and lazing on the beach, but now that Jim is motivated, he can get them the really nice hotel rooms for two and reservations in the more upscale restaurants. Leonard has no objection to getting a little pampered (especially when Jim has done something especially life-threatening). 

It’s actually kind of a shocker it takes Spock literal months to catch on, given that he’s the one who checks the shore leave rosters. It’s only when he’s standing in front of Jim in his private quarters, stiltedly asking Jim and Leonard to ditch their shore leave plans to witness a very important moment in his life, that he seems to register the two of them are, in fact, holding hands.

“Don’t be too rough on him,” Jim advises. “Sulu had to tell _me_ we were already a couple before I noticed, remember?”

“That,” Leonard points out, fixing Jim’s tie for him because he’s not going to manage himself, “really just reflects badly on both of you.”

“Point.”

Nyota asks them, later, after the ceremony is over and they’re sipping fruit juice on the beach in celebration. “So,” she says, sparkling all over with joy while Spock watches her like she hung the moon in the sky and then explained to him in quantum terms why that was impossible. “What about you guys? You gonna tie the knot, too? Take the whole command team off the market?”

Leonard snorts with laughter. “Find me a justice of the peace who’ll accept some asshat saying ‘I take thee, Bones’, then we’ll talk.”

Jim grins at him, impish. “Challenge accepted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got away from me a little towards the end. 
> 
> Also, Jim Kirk is a closet romantic in any and all iterations. I will die on this hill. TOS!Kirk does not love 'em and leave 'em, he gets into brief and intensely emotional flings and then gets sad when they're over. I know this is because of when the show was made, but come on. And in my personal interpretation, AOS!Kirk is not that different, he just has more baggage and handles it worse. I mean in what world would Gaila tell him she loves him if they were just having a one night stand or a fuckbuddy type relationship? My money is on Jim being just as romantic and intense with all his partners, just being way way worse at handling the fallout.


End file.
